Art and Danny DeVito clash at First Friday Happenings

First Friday at Copy and Vox was a little crazier then usual this month. When I arrived at our space (Copy) I noticed all these little pink notices everywhere; seems the street outside was going to be used to film an episode of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia". I immediately felt sorry for the film crew, they were probably expecting a deserted industrial street and weren't prepared to shoot opposite a major rager, which is what the night turned out to be:



Vox was hosting a major group show, "Solid Gold" and we proudly presented the work of Julio C. Gonzalez (read more here), which I can safely call awesome because I had nothing what-so-ever to do with the setting up of it, it was all Julio and Luren Jenison.


Juilo's spinning television and light-up drum-set installation at Copy.


Luren Jenison (curator) and Julio C. Gonzalez (artist).

Whilst waiting for someone to show up and play Julio's light-up drum set I read the new Megawords (more on that later) and looked out Vox's window to where's waldo Danny Devito. I found him, along with the dude that plays Dennis, but was too lazy to go down the street for a closer look.


The new Megawords (free)


Danny DeVito and Glen Howerton from "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia"

It was fun going back and forth between the sitcom filming outside and Julio's drum-set inside:





The machinery that made Julio's device work was visible in the Store at Copy.


Julio and the weird guy.

Eventually this weird-guy with a portable electric guitar rig came and jammed out with Julio. Which was great until he headed over to Screening at Vox:





. . . Where he and his flute friend went a little wild. At Screening they were screening Primordial Soup, an early building block of video-art-history by George Stadnik, which probably deserved a little more respect then the wild musicians were showing it.

The night ended strangely as the sitcom crew kept giving all the art-folks a hard time for making noise up on the 3rd floor balcony. . . but it was all over without any bloodshed.

Nick Paparone at Vox Populi

King Kiosk

Nick Paparone
Vox Populi
Cliffs, Bluffs and Steamy Lowlands
Through June 1st.

Cliffs, Bluffs and Steamy Lowlands , Nick Paparone's first exhibition at Vox Populi, almost smells like a male adolescent that hasn't yet learned to use deodorant. If each separate sculpture and print were a painting you could say Mr. Paparone's palette was heavy on the reds and yellows associated with fast food restaurants, comic books, and the logos of corporate america. The work is compelling and repulsive at the same time.

The duel manipulated posters of Cindy Crawford; 400 Horsepower #1 and 2 (Mr. Paparone cleverly used the one with bananas for hair as his announcement card) are so gorgeous you almost want to lick them. In them Cindy is glistening in her revealing yellow bathing suit, chest puffed out, feminine and yet looking remarkably strong. The addition of fruit to her head turns the image upside down; instead of being a subject of masturbation and sexual fantasy her image becomes absurdist in nature. If this is representative of a Freudian-type fear of being dominated by sex then the artist has made a marvelous attempt at exorcising the demon.


400 Horsepower #2

The tour de force of the exhibition is easy enough to find as it dominates the entire space, leaving the other artworks little room to breathe; King Kiosk is a about the size of a garden shack with no entrance and completely covered by comic books. The eyes at the bottom of the structure, compounded with the sticks jutting out the top (which to me read as a sort of deer-antler-like attachment) lend the object animate properties, yet it has a shelf, almost (obviously) like a kiosk. Perhaps most mysterious is the fact that it wears chains. If I were to draw conclusions they would again be sexual, adolescent, and angst-ridden in nature. It is an object that seems like it could explode from the various forces pulling at it at any instant.

A moment of rest, though it too seems a little dangerous comes, quite literally, from a light in the corner. The Wonder Wander, a stand alone corner lamp, seemingly circa 1990, has a motorized spinning globe, laminated with aluminum foil and colored with markers, about it's middle. Immediately I think of this song.


The Wonder Wander

(Bravo Nick!)

(It should be noted that all the exhibits at Vox Populi are good right now and in due time I hope to talk about Stefan Abrams and Jack Sloss.)

In Passing at Vox Populi

Linda Yun
Vox Populi
April 4th-27th


High

It has been standard practice, whenever I've worked installing an exhibition at a major art institution, to take a polaroid of the artworks in order to note how they were shipped. Often, that polaroid would be left near the artwork itself, or close enough to it that you could experience the idea of both at the same time. I have always been fascinated by the difference between an object and an image of that object, and I often grant the eye of the camera unusual powers; trusting its "eyes" over my own.

This makes sense when you want to look at a still frame of an action sequence, or discover the background of the action you were seeking to capture. The functionality of the camera's image comes into question when a still, real, object is right in front of your eyes and you are given the choice of whether to look at it, the actual experience, or an image of the actual experience, as is the case of the work of Linda Yun, currently on display at Vox Populi.


Placebo []

The flattening of an image that occurs when you take a picture gives you the feeling that reality has already been interpreted for you. The details, even though some of them become lost, become easier for your mind to process. Each polaroid also lends a measure of important to the works, someone has already granted them "picture worthy", and not just digital picture worthy, but polaroid picture worthy (we all are no doubt aware of the expense of film for polaroid cameras). Though it occurred to me to think about, I won't bother to dissect what Ms, Yun's work would be if the polaroids weren't present, they are such an intricate and vital part of this exhibition that I think it would be impossible (as well as irrelevant).

In Passing is as quiet as a funeral home and often as creepy as a ghost story.


Bridge

Opportunity for Artists

Submit your work to be a part of Vox Populi's annual juried show:
Submission Form.

TONIGHT: FREE DRINKS AND ELECTRICITY AT VOX

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 21 FROM 7PM TO 9PM:

MAXIMILLIAN LAWRENCE OFFERS HIS EXHIBITION/WORK-IN-PROGRESS, THE DARLINGTON PAIR, FOR PUBLIC EXPERIMENTATION.

(IF YOU CAN'T MAKE IT ON THE 21ST, STOP BY THE GALLERY DURING REGULAR HOURS AND CHANCE THAT YOU WILL CATCH HIM BUILDING, REPAIRING AND RECORDING HIS EXPERIMENTATIONS)

"The Darlington Pair Maximillian Lawrence will be creating a device he refers to as a “relationship amplifier”, based on the electronic principle of a Darlington Pair. (A Darlington pair is a set of two transistors that amplify weak signals into stronger and sharper signals for both audio and microprocessing) In the best case, the gallery space will amplify the relationships between the people interacting with the musical instruments, culminating into a spectacularly blinding light and resonant bowel moving sound show, ending with a profound spiritual experience. In its worst case, it will flash LED’s and make fart noises."

At Vox

Amy Adams But Nature More

Vox Populi. ENDS TODAY.



Amy Adams has told me that she is interested in the chaos of everyday life, on how our focus becomes consumed in the details and we are never able to properly see the big picture. Stress, work, coffee, deadlines, these are the things that take up our days, these are the thoughts in our heads. With this in mind it is interesting to me that her last two installations at Vox Populi (Undead and But Nature More) have given the overall feeling of being a landscape we are able to see from a distance. She has given us a perspective she says we can't have, and isn't that one of the main arguments for the mainstay of artistic work? It provides us with the things that life cannot. . .

Her current exhibition at Vox Populi, But Nature More draws us even further from the chaos of work in the metropolis. We are shown a "diamond"-studded mountain-scape, in a cavern between mountains we are able to glance a projection of the sky, it's clouds moving at a rate that looks like a movie in fast-forward. It is a strange and surreal portal. It makes me think of the idea of time travel.

But Nature More draws an impossible line in the sand. We live in the city, we make our living from it , but if asked which we liked better, the man-made or the natural environment, without thought to how we would survive, which would we choose? Most of us might conclude that we like nature more, but in light of having to wake up and go to work in the morning, we might also conclude that liking nature more is a moot point.

Andrew Suggs Table Turning

Vox Populi. ENDS TODAY.


Red Scare

According to Wikipedia Table Turning is an outdated and rather messy form of Ouija board "in which participants sit around a table, place their hands on it, and wait for rotations. . . the alphabet would be slowly called over and the table would tilt at the appropriate letter, thus spelling out words and sentences." Upon entering Mr. Suggs exhibition we are therefore predisposed to think about communing with spirits and all the eeriness that entails. Two pieces of art immediately fit our frame of mind; a large pool of wax (from candles?)entitled Red Scare and a Ouija Board entitled Yes, Yes. even though it is without the words "yes", "no" and "maybe" and is tilted up by an unplugged microphone on one side.


As Above, So Below (background). Yes, Yes (foreground)

There are also several references to music. In the piece As Above, So Below, a series of constellations Mr. Suggs has made up and named after various people whose last names begin with "m" we see the names Morrissey, McCartney, and even Manson (among an assortment of "m"s with other professions). There are two sets of earbuds on pedestals, equipped with ungodly amounts of wire and coated in rubber. One can guess by the title Unsung Sculpture, that this makes the buds worthless. The final piece is a video installation, comprised of three TVs positioned at varying heights behind two black curtains. The subject matter of the videos appears to be fans at a concert, only rendered slower and more red then they would be in life. The curtains impart the feeling of standing backstage while a rock group performs and looking out over the sea of fans. Not on stage yourself, but set apart from the rest of the spectators. This piece is entitled Incantations.

Whenever I am around the work of Mr. Suggs I cannot help but think of gothic or industrial music which doesn't fail to put me in mind of high school. My mind runs circles from there and I am always concerned that I haven't figured it all out.


Incantations


Unsung Sculpture

Jonathan Prull Providence #709

Vox Populi. ENDS TODAY.



I can only consider that Jonathan Prull's great cardboard characters are fighting some horrible and violent battle. Though one of them appears to be drunk, he doesn't seem to be having fun and may have just shot himself. There is a tank-like creation shooting an unsettled dog-like thing and in the back of it all there is a tall monstrous-looking squirrel or squirrel-like animal. It's all a very dark and nightmarish world these people/creatures live in and walking through the installation leaves one in fear of getting a paper cut.